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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Huge_Trust_5057 on 2024-09-13 12:38:35+00:00.
I was working on a writeup about a korean incident where people gathered up to watch a man build a tent, but I accidentally deleted it so I decided to write this one first.
But then I got distracted and abandoned it halfway for a year, then wrote it again.
--Introduction--
MMORPGs are a type of game where you join a virtual multiplayer world and do stuff. They are very often also called "MMOs", although techincally this may also includes other genres like MMOFPS.
By the early 2010s, MMORPGs in korea were slowly going stale. Most Korean MMORPGs were mostly inspired by - A game I once wrote a writeupabout- and while was a very successful MMORPG, the basic formula was going stale.
The player starts in a medieval europe inspired world. You choose from some basic classes like "archer" or "wizard". You only can use one type of weapon per class. You are introduced to the world(a bad god unleashed a bad army on our good kingdom blah blah blah everyone just skips this anyway blah blah). You use basic fighting skills to hunt monsters and later a field boss. You gain the experience from them and gain levels. You use the shiny trinklets to upgrade your weapon. Rinse and repeat 200 times. Also good weapons and better upgrade stuff can only be bough by cash.
This formula was going stale. Most korean players were playing other games like -and later, and . To most players korean MMORPGs were considered outdated cashgrabs for old people.
, also called for short, was a mobile MMORPG game developed by Nexon. Now for most people who know about korean games would shudder at this name. Nexon is very well known for making very P2W(which means that you need to sink a lot of real-life money to excel in the game) games. A good example would be , where everything from extra inventory slots, character customization items, and even world wide chat needs to be paid with real life money. (I wrote this part in 2023- I'd like to add that by 2024, nexon did make some nice games like or .)
But claimed to be different. And the result was different.
--Durango: Wildlands-- The basic setting of this game was that people from the modern world were randomly teleported into a fictional world, called Durango. This world was a place where islands from different timezones would appear and dissappear, and the islands were inhabited mostly by dinosaurs, and things from the modern world would often show up, with the human survivors having an about prehistoric-ish world. And before you ask, yes, you could ride the dinosaurs.
Durango had many differences from lineage-inspired MMORPGs, and many people considered it revolutionary.
-Unlike most MMORPGs, the game focused not only on combat, but also other features like building, farming and gathering. You were free to build things like boxes, houses, workbenches everywhere and you could claim territories in a town. You also could join a tribe and build a town together. You also could farm seeds. You could cook things for your tribe. It was even possible for you to enjoy the game without fighting a single enemy in the main game. Although.. You could say that this isn't unique to durango, as other games like , , also focuses on many interactions and often allows players to shape the world. Still, durango was the first major MMO in korea that does this.
-There was no class system. You did get to choose a job at the start of the game, but what it did was provide basic skills and was almost meaningless after the start of the game. You were advised to specialize in a skill tree like cooking, blacksmithing, melee combat, ect and especially advised to join a tribe with various specialities and get help from them in a skill you can't do but you were free to become a jack-of-all-trades type of character.
-the game was suprisingly not P2W. Of course things like instant crafting and cosmetics were bought by cash, but considering how often they just gave out cash(usually with a very wholesome message) and how it was a mobile, free-to-play game from a very P2W-friendly company, it was relatively anti-P2W, even to a very suspicious extent.
-The crafting system was very intresting. I'm still not sure why this system isn't more widely used in other video games. Say, you're playing a game, and you want to make a stone hammer. It may look like this:"craft stone hammer: requires 2 stone, 1 wood stick, 1 rope." But you may think: hey, can't I make a stone hammer with iron ore instead of normal stone? And can't I use these copper wires instead of rope? used a quite novel attribute-based crafting system. You didn't need a specific type of rock to make the hammer, it only specified that it needed an item with a "hard" and "solid" attribute. So yes you could use iron ore, marble, and even chunks of meat, which would even change how the hammer is colored and the stats of the hammer.
This attribute system could further be used to create a more sophisticated crafting system. For example you could choose to carbonize the steel used in your sword, which would add a "firm" attribute to your steel ingot, and this attribute would give a buff on attacks when you make a sword with it. Or you could desulfurize the ingot instead, which would give it a "high density" attribute and give the finished item better durability.
Every item also had a level, and could have unique attributes randomly. Often you would randomly get a branch with a weak attribute. Or you could be lucky and find a wood branch with a rare attribute which would boost the stats of your tool when you use it to craft one.
This meant that
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It was possible to make very weird items like "cake soup"(which became a meme, and later the developers held an event where they would cook one and eat it), "boiled bow"(this was actually a strategy because you could boil a lv40 bow in Lv60 water to get a Lv50 boiled bow), "steamed leather boot"(which was edible, and the developers said the point of the crafting system was to "let players eat a leather boot") or "steamed steamed raw fillet"(which was a very overpowered food item and was cooked in hundreds by a tribe's cook). One even created a wearable canned leather clothing.
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Items were actually unique. A same wood stick, both on the highest level possible, could have very different values depending on its attributes. One with a rare attribute could be used to make very powerful weapon, and could be sold at a high price. And this also meant that weapons and tools could actually be unique instead of being the same copies made from the same items.
The basic progression would look like: you start, you build a small settlement with a bushfire and some boxes on your territory, maybe socialize with your neighbors, then you later move to a more spacious island, bulid a cozy home base with a house and stuff. Then you further progress down the game and reach the highest level, and join a tribe. Usually they would give out roles and you would get one. You could be tasked to specialize in attacking skills, and hunt animals and bring it to the tribe's territory, or you could be tasked with specializing in cooking skills and processing this meat to create food items. Or you could be tasked with specializing in crafting skills and crafting high level, effective items for the tribe to use(as I said earlier, items in this game is actually unique). You could be tasked to guard the tribe's territories on a special island where PVP is allowed, and you could build walls and turrets to defend it. Or you could not join a clan at all and do whatever you want.
This made the game a very unique experience, and the game won second prize in korea's 2018 game awards. But if it ended here, this would be a write-up for other subreddits. This is r/ hobbydrama, after all, and this isn't that type of story.
--Going Down..--
The first problem with this game is that it spent too much years in development. It was revealed in 2012, and was released in 2018. It was brewing for over 6~7 years, without a proper development goal. And it guzzled over 15 million dollars in development costs.
When it was finally ready, Nexon advertised the game a lot, including a reservation where you would reserve your ID to get an item later when the game gets released. This was to estimate how much people would play the game. But apparently they did a bad job at this, as they very, very underestimated the amount of players interested in this game.
What most players saw when they booted up the game with excitement was a loading screen that never ended. And then they were greeted with a screen that notified them...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1fftotr/video_games_durango_wildlands_how_do_you_make_a/